Abstract

Education has enormous influence on individual prospects for a flourishing life, thus, the justice of an education system is a key indicator of the justice in a society. Normally, the debate over educational justice refers to two fundamental questions: the conception of justice and the aims and purposes of education. We may agree about the meaning of justice, but disagree about the aim of education, and vice versa, and thus come to very different perspective about what educational policies should entail. However, what does justice look like when it comes to the distribution of educational goods? Should we ensure that all children have equal educational resources and opportunities or should we rather concentrate on equal educational attachment? Recently, there is a debate on educational justice which mainly focuses on the status and role of comparatively considerations within a just distribution of educational benefits. According to the adequacy approach, the state is required to ensure all children have enough or adequate education. Once the adequate threshold of educational resources is obtained, there is no injustice in the fact that some children have better education than others. In contrast with adequacy approach, proponents of what can be called educational equality approach have instead argued that justice requires prospects for educational achievement to be dependent upon a child’s ability and willingness to learn, and not on factors outside of her control. Therefore, the state is required to ensure that an individual’s prospects for educational achievement should be a function only of that individual’s effort and talent, not of his or her social class background or other factors outside of her control. It seems that the debate between proponents of adequacy and proponents of equality in educational opportunity reflects very different ways to think about just educational policy and practice. This paper is trying to address this debate. It proceeds as follows. In the next section, I will outline the Equality vs. Adequacy debate. Then, in section III, I would like to take issue with these approaches. I will argue that both approaches have negative effects on equality and justice in education. Finally, inspired by Harvard political philosopher Danielle Allen’s work on education and equality, I will propose an alternative conception of educational equality. I believe it is a better way of understanding the meaning of educational justice for a democratic society.